Missoula Hospital Named Best in Montana by Newsweek

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The number one hospital in Montana, as judged by World’s Best Hospitals 2025 by Newsweek and Statista, is once again Providence St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula.

I spoke with Chief Medical Officer Dr. James McKay about the honor bestowed just this week.

Providence St. Patrick Named Best in Montana

“I'm happy to announce that we were judged within the top 100 hospitals by Newsweek in the entire country,” began Dr. McKay. “This includes not just community hospitals like ourselves, but also academic medical centers like the Mayo clinics, Stanford, UCLA, and other places. So I think it puts us in good stead. It was judged by patient experience and quality measures, as well as recommendation of peer organizations and hospitals as well as some other metrics.”

It wasn’t just the patients who judged Providence St. Patrick highly; it was many peer organizations, as well.

Many Medical Peer Organizations Chose St. Pat's as Best in Montana

“Again, the most prominent weights are given to the quality metrics and then the review of peers, and that's 37.5 and 35 percent, respectively, in terms of their weight,” he said. “The ‘PROM’ designation is only 5 percent, but it is important.  PROM stands for Patient Reported Outcome Measures. And it's really looking at is the patient-reported measures, that is how they perceive their care, and then how we respond to those surveys.”

McKay responded to a comment that the hospital is almost always full to capacity and how they handle the patient load.

“We're doing the best we can,” he said. “Luckily, we're the hospital of choice for many people in the region, so we often really are very full. So we're working on lots of innovative ways to take care of as many people as we can, and that includes opening up areas of the hospital which we previously haven't been necessarily using for clinical care, and trying to do our best to do everything possible to give the best care to patients, but also do it in a timely fashion as possible.”

Despite their Full Patient Load, McKay said Excellent Patient Care Continues

I related my own patient experience to Dr. McKay about my recent successful cataract surgery.

“People think of doctors and nurses when they think of the hospital, but it's really a team effort by so many people,” he said. “I mean, the folks that made it possible for you to have that surgery. There are people who are down in sterile processing to make sure all that equipment is absolutely pristinely sterile and ready to go. You don't even think about those folks, along with the people in the pharmacy and in the lab, and it just it really takes so many people, and we're very fortunate.”

2,400 hospitals across 30 countries are judged every year for the World’s Best Hospitals by Newsweek and Statista, and Providence St. Patrick Hospital was judged best in Montana.